4 Non-Spammy Ways to Scale Your Outreach

It's probably safe to assume that when you reach out to your network via email, you want to be as personable as possible. But in a time when sending bulk mail or email newsletters to thousands of contacts is as simple as clicking a few buttons, it suddenly becomes very easy to send truly cold emails that don't have a lot of heart.

While we'd love to say stop sending cold and bulk emails, but the solution isn't that easy.

Even if you're not sending cold prospecting sales emails, it's good practice to scale all of your outreach, even if you're only guilty of sending a bulk email newsletter once a week. You have plenty of opportunities to personalize these emails in very simple ways, why not go for it? Utilizing these simple changes could mean a higher open rate, or even a higher response rate. But, at the end of the day, you're doing more to build up a better and more genuine relationship with your network and the contacts within it.

Start scaling your outreach

What's your solution? If you feel like you can't move away from sending cold outreach emails or big bulk emails out to all of your contacts at once, there are a few tweaks you can make to your process that can help personalize it and make your contacts feel a little more love. This goes beyond making sure that the subject line or the greeting of your email is personalized with your contact's name...

1. Make yourself personable

Now there's nothing worse than getting a bad cold email that's irrelevant and inevitably one that you send right to the trash. We can probably agree that there's nothing worse than getting one of those emails that reads as if it's a form email, with no personalization whatsoever. One of the best ways you can warm up your cold emails is by making yourself a little more relatable.

When you get cold outreach emails or a big bulk email newsletter, don't you want to know who the voice is behind it? Be sure to include a little information about you, make yourself relatable and give your contacts a chance to find out more about you. Link to your social media, and include ample contact information to make it easier for you to be reached.

An easy way to check your writing? Read it aloud to yourself, it gives you a chance to pick up any awkward or cold phrases you may have inadvertently used. But going above and beyond, there are a few words you can remove from ever using in your emails, lest they make you sound like a very cold, spammy, robot.

Utilize more inclusive words such as you and us, and where applicable, your contact's name. Don't try and lure your contacts in with 'click here' but instead show and give them value and use words like 'because' that can connect what you're offering them or what piece of value you're sharing with them and how it's valuable for them. Don't be afraid to over-explain!

Segmenting allows you to send the right message to the right people, and even if you're doing it in a bulk fashion, they're getting messaging that's more tailored to them, what they do, and the information they want to receive from you. While you're doing the work to segment your contacts, you can also utilize tools such as merge tags, which allow you to dynamically place personalized information within the emails. This can be everything from asking about how their kids are doing and have the name of their child automatically filled in the sentence, giving each email a more personal touch.

3. Do your research

This goes hand in hand with segmenting your contacts. Taking the time to get to know the contacts in your network can help you better segment them into a bucket that fits who they are and what they mean for your business, but it also allows you to create a more personalized experience for them.

Your research can be based on their past history with your emails; what they've opened or clicked on before to give you an idea of what they're interested in. You could even do a quick search on LinkedIn to see what they do for a living and what they're latest updates are all about. Utilize that research to share something they may find interesting and show that you're thinking of them. It can be as simple as an article you saw online or an update to content they'd shown interest in in the past.

Even if these emails are going out to a segmented group of people, they'll still feel personally touched that you did the research to send them relevant information rather than your broad newsletter that goes out to everyone on your list.

4. Adjust your send time

Make an informed decision on your email send time based on your purpose. We've read many studies and seen all the facts and stats on when the best time to send your emails are. The problem is that they never seem to agree on anything. When getting ready to send out your emails, you stand a better chance of getting the open rate, or even the click-through rate you want, simply by doing some digging into what's best for your contacts.

Start sending more personalized emails

Where do you begin? It's all about breaking down your network and giving your contacts a more personalized experience. No, you don't have to start sending all individual emails (although every once and a while you ought to), but there are tricks such as merge tags and better segmentation that can give you an easy way to reach your network in a way that makes them feel as if they're being contacted individually.

Start with your research and segmentation, and then give your network some value. Share relevant information and articles and make yourself a more accessible and personable contact...no matter how cold your email outreach may start out as.